God is Light. February 7. All the deep things of God are bright, for God is Light. God's arbitrary will and almighty power may seem dark by themselves though deep, but that is because they do not involve His moral character. Join them with the fact that He is a God of mercy as well as justice; remember that His essence is love, and the thunder-cloud will blaze with dewy gold, full of soft rain and pure light. _MS. Letter_. 1844. The Veil Lifted. February 8. Science is, I verily believe, like virtue, its own exceeding great reward. I can conceive few human states more enviable than that of the man to whom--panting in the foul laboratory, or watching for his life in the tropic forest--Isis shall for a moment lift her sacred veil and show him, once and for ever, the thing he dreamed not of, some law, or even mere hint of a law, explaining one fact: but explaining with it a thousand more, connecting them all with each other and with the mighty whole, till order and meaning shoots through some old chaos of scattered observations. Is not that a joy, a prize, which wealth cannot give nor poverty take away? What it may lead to he knows not. Of what use it may be he knows not. But this he knows, that somewhere it must lead, of some use it will be. For it is a truth. _Lectures on Science and Superstition_. 1866. All Science One. February 9. Physical and spiritual science seem to the world to be distinct. One sight of God as we shall some day see Him will show us that they are indissolubly and eternally the same. _MS._ Passion and Reason. February 10. Passion and reason in a healthy mind ought to be inseparable. We need not be passionless because we reason correctly. Strange to say, one's feelings will often sharpen one's knowledge of the truth, as they do one's powers of action. _MS._ 1843. Enthusiasm and Tact. February 11. . . . People smile at the "enthusiasm of youth"--that enthusiasm which they themselves secretly look back at with a sigh, perhaps unconscious that it is partly their own fault that they ever lost it. . . . Do not fear being considered an enthusiast. What matter? But pray for _tact_, the true tact which love alone can give, to prevent scandalising a weak brother. _Letters and Memories_. 1842. Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad, if thou wilt: Do what thou dost as if the stake were heaven, And that thy last deed ere the judgment-day. When all's done, nothing's done. There's rest above-- Below let work be death, if work be love! _Saint's Tragedy_, Act ii. Scene viii. 1847. The Eternal Good. February 12.